The Health Benefits of Cryotherapy
Literally meaning cold therapy, cryotherapy is a method of exposing the body to extreme cold temperatures for a couple of minutes. When you go for this method, you may choose to have whole-body cryotherapy or just in certain portions of your body. There are many ways to do localized cryotherapy. These methods range from inserting probes into the tissues, ice baths, coolant sprays, ice massage, and ice packs. Meanwhile, whole-body cryotherapy is the process of having the body immersed for several minutes into extremely cold air.
The process of whole-body cryotherapy offers a good range of health benefits for you. Often, a small enclosure or an enclosed chamber is used to surround your body as you stand. At the top portion, you will see an opening for your head. The enclosure goes through a drop in temperature between negative 200 and 300?F. The person remains in ultra-low temperature air for about two and four minutes.
You can enjoy a wide array of health benefits of cryotherapy even just for one session. But then, if you want long-term effects for cryotherapy, you need to have them regularly. Many athletes have cryotherapy two times per day. For others, on the other hand, their cryotherapy sessions happen daily for ten days straight and then once a month after finishing this streak.
When it comes to cryotherapy, you enjoy a whole range of benefits for each session for your health. For starters, they help reduce your migraine symptoms. Cryotherapy helps treat migraines by numbing and cooling the nerves in your neck area. According to studies, placing a neck wrap with two frozen ice packs around your carotid arteries in the neck can help reduce migraine pain. The method works by cooling the blood that circulates to your intracranial vessels. Your carotid arteries are near the surface of your skin so you can access them.
With cryotherapy sessions, they also help numbing irritation to the nerves. Over the years, cryotherapy is the method of choice for athletes to better treat their injuries. Going through cryotherapy sessions is most common for athletes because the technique helps numb pain. The cold actually aids in numbing irritated nerves. For doctors, they treat affected areas by inserting a small probe into the nearby tissues. For this purpose, cryotherapy can help treat acute injuries, chronic pain, and neuromas or pinched nerves.
If you are going through mood disorders, cryotherapy can also help. Physiological hormonal responses often become the result of extremely cold temperatures that whole-body cryotherapy offers. You can expect the release of noradrenaline, adrenaline, and endorphins. Releasing these hormones can positively influence people with mood disorders like depression and anxiety. According to studies, whole-body cryotherapy proves to be effective in treating both disorders in the short term.